Stranger Turns in Lost Engagement Ring Found on Subway

A Brooklyn woman has been reunited with her lost engagement ring, thanks to the kindness of strangers. Roseanne Colletti reports. (Published Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013)

A teaching assistant in New York City is grateful to a mystery woman who turned in her 3-carat diamond ring to the subway's lost and found.

Hager Elsayed discovered her ring was gone while riding the N train on her way to a doctor's appointment.

"I noticed it was missing as soon as I sat down," she recalled. "I was devastated. I just prayed to God it was at home somewhere."

She tore her home apart; it wasn't there.

She felt terrible. Her fiance, Juan Rivera, lamented that he was still paying for the ring.

"He was pretty upset," said Elsayed. "But he was also in denial. He said, 'There is no way you can lose a ring like that.'"

The ring had always been loose on her finger, and may have gotten more loose after Elsayed lost some weight after getting sick.

About two months later, something clicked when Elsayed saw the station agent in Brooklyn. She realized he'd been working there the day her ring went missing and asked him if it had been found.

"I showed him a picture of it, and he said, 'Yeah, that's the ring,'" said Elsayed.

"I was so excited, I gave him a hug," she said. "He was such a good guy."

Anthony Tiralosi told her an elderly woman who spoke no English had discovered it near the MetroCard machine and turned it in.

Tiralosi told the New York Post he knew it was valuable because he had previously worked selling jewelry, but he never thought about keeping it. Instead, he went home and told his kids about the ring. He wanted them to know the importance of returning something that doesn't belong to them.

As for the mystery woman, "She's an angel, whoever she is, and God bless her honesty," said Elsayed.

"The whole moral of the story is there are still good people out there," Elsayed said.

And Elsayed says the ring won't be going anywhere again: she's had it resized and "it's now stuck on my finger."